“Who has time to read everything?” Orca peered into a cave of bark-paper codices.
Librarians wrapped in coarse cotton had black eyes and knotty egg-white beards like Azizi’s Master of Books and Bones. Everyone reminded Djola of his other life. The librarians were cordial and sent word to Urzula—her residence was nearby—that Djola wished an audience.
Like the Babalawos, they lamented a ruined mainland and then drifted back into the shadowy aisles of books. The head librarian blamed greedy citizens and barbarians for void-winds and poison desert. “Only a fool brings a whole forest to its knees or plants corn without beans and gourds. Who shaves sweetgrass to a nub or gouges Mama Zamba’s bosom for poison metals to make baubles?”
Nobody listened when Djola talked like that. “Something clouds our minds and kills our spirits.” Djola tapped his chest. “Poison desert inside too.”
The head librarian pounded his desk. “Know yourself. Know the world.”
“Yes.” Djola was relieved to find someone who understood. “I’ve been practicing a fire-spell. I need your help, your wisdom, to hold chill in my heart and hands.”
The librarian chuckled. “Don’t believe the griot tales. Fire-spells are dangerous, but novices never burn to death. They can’t pull enough fire.”
“I need to pull a lot of fire.”
The head librarian leaned close and grinned. “I have only modest skill, but I’ll share a secret. Kyrie was my student. Of course, I can’t take credit for her ferocity.”
Djola smiled. “No, of course not.”
“Clumsy at first but so much power, Kyrie was someone who might have burnt herself up. But I knew just what to say.” He savored some insight he’d doled out. “What are you trying to do?”
Djola licked dry lips. He hadn’t told anyone his plan. “If I dance Xhalan Xhala at the border between green lands and poison desert, reckoning fire might show what led to poison sandstorms. Then I could find an antidote.”
“No,” the librarian roared, “too dangerous.” He switched to Empire vernacular and waved a spark torch, warding off evil. “Only a madman—”
“Xhalan Xhala is a prophet’s tool.” Djola effected a calm manner. “I could look at now and see the future and call it forth.”
“You’d conjure one future. There are so many. You’d add to the void.”
“No, a meal for the crossroads gods.”
The librarian sneered. “Who can count on those tricksters?”
“I found a book in Kaharta,” Djola said, “Amplify Now—”
“Amplify Now—in Kaharta?”
“Kaharta had the best library on the mainland,” Orca blurted.
The librarian aimed the torch at Djola. “Rogue pirates burned Kaharta, looted the library.”
Orca pushed the torch aside. “Pezarrat dumped the book out a porthole.”
“Good. Amplify Now is a few notes written by desperate Elders.” The librarian came to the front of his desk. He was taller than Djola. “What are you, Sorit and Zamanzi?”
“Anawanama and Zamanzi.” Djola corrected him. “My brother is a chief—”
“You should know better.” The librarian narrowed his eyes. “You can’t rip up the fabric of ancient wisdom for a few convenient threads.”
“I seek the whole cloth.” Djola clenched a fist behind his back.
The librarian sighed. “Xhalan Xhala is sacred ritual, a lifetime practice. Who learns that from a book?”
“That’s why I’ve come to you.” Djola tugged the frothy cloth at the librarian’s neck, cutting off his air. “We’re running out of time. We have to do something. Soon.”
“Stop.” Orca pulled Djola’s hands away and stood between them. “Forgive us. Too many months at sea. Loved ones lost. Djola would learn anything to master the spell.”
The librarian rubbed his throat. “Nobody masters Xhalan Xhala—you surrender to it.”
“I would surrender,” Djola declared. “I would do anything.”
“I’ll bet you would.” The librarian almost snarled, “I can’t teach what is impossible.”
“You mean you won’t try.” Djola’s chest was fire again. “Ignorance can’t save us.”
The librarian pounded the torch on the rock floor. “You need a Lahesh conjurer, like Yari, the griot of griots and master of nothing. Who ever knows all the stories?”
Djola grabbed the librarian’s rough cotton sleeve. “Yari hides from the world.”
“Empire citizens call vesons abominations and string them up. Can you blame Yari?”
“Yes.” Instead of pummeling the librarian, Djola raced down the corridor and out into the sunset. Great gulps of salt air quenched the fire in his chest and belly.
Orca scurried behind him. “We should come back tomorrow and reason with—”
“Librarians and Babalawos won’t help. They think ignorant, foolish people have called disaster upon themselves—a cure for that is impossible.”
Orca clutched Djola’s shoulders, his face open, his smile deep. “You’re a master. You can learn anything, even the impossible, without anybody’s help.”
Djola shrugged Orca off. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“Of course you are.”
Instead of arguing, Djola sent Orca to the sky windows and tromped across the ridge to meet Queen Urzula.
13
Fortress
Yidohwedo’s head was the pirate queen’s fortress, a serpent’s face with fire eyes overlooking the sea. The queen’s mountain chambers never went dark. Spark torches lit the night without burning tree oil and lasted who knows how long. This Lahesh wim-wom was one of the floating cities’ most closely guarded secrets. Impossible conjure until Lahesh tinkerers mastered it. The floating cities could have shared their fire-spell with the world and saved a hundred hundred cathedral trees or more, but they were greedy, stingy pirates. Djola squashed a gout of anger.
Urzula sat alone in a courtyard on a stone bench, watching the sunset. A mosaic of crystals at her feet soaked up the last rays of light. “Too beautiful a night to waste in a cave.” She smiled. If she had bad news, she wouldn’t flash her teeth at Djola. Silvery white stars made half circles above her dark eyes. A white line crossed her purple-tinted lips going from chin to nose. She wore a tight tunic and loose-fitting pants gathered at the ankle—pirate gear. On Yidohwedo Urzula was almost unremarkable. “Why have you come to see me?”
Djola would not start with family. “The wisest conjurers in the world, Babalawos, Iyalawos, and librarians, offered nothing new to solve the poison dust mystery.”
Urzula flicked her fingers. “Of course you know more than librarians and Iyalawos sitting in the middle of the Salty Sea.”
“If they applied their wisdom to the problem,” he retorted, “we could solve this.”
She kissed her teeth. “You think you’re the only one who looks for a solution?”
“They were patronizing, indifferent. They’ve already given up.”